The School for Thieves, page 26
Tom ducked behind the deck of the dirigible and was just able to catch snatches of their conversation over the noise of the airship’s engine.
“But to kill them all? What were you thinking?” Lysander Hoffmann’s face was pale, his eyes wild and terrified-looking. Beside him Anushka appeared as if she was about to collapse, and Matthias was in a kind of dazed stupor.
“And here I was thinking you’d finally developed a spine, Lysander,” said Crowe sneeringly. “What did you think we had planned for them? A little spray of water, like a clown’s flower?”
“I—I don’t know what I thought… but to murder them all like that… I thought we were just wanting to make Templeton look incompetent, to get him removed and destroy his hopes of joining the Directorate. Is he dead as well?”
“Who knows?” Crowe could barely have looked less interested. “We are on the road to change, Hoffmann. Now get on board and stop delaying me!”
“We’re not coming with you,” said Lysander.
“Yes, you very well are! You can’t look back now. Get on board.”
“No!”
Crowe looked as if he had encountered a puzzle he couldn’t quite fathom. “But, my dear Hoffers, what are you going to do if you stay? You’ll be caught in the middle—sideless, friendless. You’ll doom your whole family. You understand that, don’t you?”
Lysander’s mouth flapped, like a fish suffocating on a deck.
Anushka gently slipped her hand into her husband’s and interlocked their fingers. “We’re not going with you,” she said.
Crowe paused, still regarding them with that bemused look. “You are choosing the wrong side of history,” he said at last.
He turned and disappeared up the gangplank. The Hoffmanns stood unmoving for several long seconds before Lysander put an arm around Matthias’s shoulder and then led his family quickly away, Anushka’s hand still tightly clutched in his own.
Compelled by he knew not what, Tom rose from his crouched position behind the dirigible and sprinted across the grass toward Crowe’s airship. The gangplank was mechanical and had already begun to withdraw into the gondola, just as the engine sound changed in pitch and the airship began to rise. The end of the gangplank was already at Tom’s head height by the time he reached it, but he managed to get just enough purchase to pull himself up and inside the open doorway before the gangplank clunked into place and the door hissed shut behind him.
Oh no, thought Tom, crouched in the sudden darkness of the gantry. What am I doing?
* * *
On the flight deck, Crowe leaned over the pilot’s shoulder and gazed out the wide windows at the town growing swiftly smaller beneath them. He could see scurrying figures entering the meadow—in pursuit? Perhaps. It didn’t matter now.
He took up the radio, twisted the dial, and then spoke a series of code words. There was a short delay before the radio crackled into life.
“Echo, blue, trident, viper,” replied a woman’s voice. “Contact established. Status update?”
“Operation successful. But Tallow Mole has turned coward. He and his family must be eliminated at once.”
There was another pause. “Why did you not liquidate them yourself?” asked the woman. Her voice was cold. Exasperated.
“It needs to be done discreetly,” said Crowe through clenched teeth. “Leaving their bodies on the lawn at Beaufort’s would lead to an investigation into Hoffmann’s affairs—”
“Tallow Mole!” interrupted the woman.
“This is a secure signal, isn’t it?” snapped Crowe. He took his thumb off the transmitter and swore loudly before pressing the button again. “Leaving their bodies there would lead to an investigation into Tallow Mole’s affairs. And until the new Directorate is in place, everything must be kept as safe and secret as possible. We can eliminate him and his family at our leisure.”
There was yet another pause. A long one. Crowe was about to twist the dial again to check that the signal was still connected when the woman’s voice crackled through the speaker.
“Agreed. I shall take the matter in hand personally.”
“Understood.”
“Meet at the rendezvous. It is time for the next phase.”
* * *
Tom tried to keep his breathing low as he processed what he had just heard. The Hoffmanns were going to be killed to ensure their silence. A new Directorate was going to replace the ones who had been murdered—this was at the heart of the plot. Was Crowe to be among them? He adjusted his position, and his shoe squeaked slightly on the polished floor.
All of a sudden there was the sound of quick feet. Before Tom had a chance to register what was happening, the door burst open violently, crashing into Tom and sending him sprawling backward. Crowe was on him in an instant, his fist raised with a thin, wicked-looking blade in his grasp.
Tom stared up at the blade, too shocked to speak.
Crowe gripped him by the chin. “You?” he exclaimed in surprise. “What did you hear, rat?”
“N-nothing!”
Crowe considered this answer for barely a second. “It matters not,” he said, and hauled Tom up by his collar. Tom stumbled and nearly lost his footing as Crowe dragged him toward the door. His hair blew back as the door slid open—and as Tom took in the dizzying height, he wondered if he was going to throw up. He had been terrified when the Corsair had flown him in the little biplane, but this was fear on a more primitive level.
“Time to fly, little rat,” said Crowe. “This is the end you deser—”
The airship suddenly lurched sideways. Both Crowe and Tom were thrown away from the door and crashed against a cupboard. Crowe rose unsteadily as the ship righted—and the cupboard door, loosened by the impact, swung back.
“What the bloody—” sputtered Crowe as Tom stared at the body of a man lying unconscious in the cupboard, dressed only in underpants, socks, and vest with his hands tied behind his back. “That’s my pilot! So who…?”
Tom heard the polite clearing of a throat behind them both. Crowe swung around to see a pistol pointed at the center of his chest.
“Be a good chap and close that door, will you?” said the figure laconically. “It’s frightfully drafty in here.”
Tom could barely believe his eyes. It was his escape and evasion teacher, Horacio Pemberley, dressed in the pilot’s uniform.
Tom had expected another cry of confusion from Crowe. A shouted challenge. What he did not expect was the speed and accuracy with which Crowe unleashed the knife in his hand, a sharp flick of his wrist sending it arrowing toward its target.
Pemberley had only a fraction of a second to see the knife’s movement, but it was enough for him to spin sideways. The knife, instead of piercing his heart as Crowe had intended, sank into Pemberley’s shoulder—but it made him drop the pistol.
Pemberley continued to spin on his heels, just avoiding the savage blow that Crowe swung at his face. The two men had swapped positions in the airship corridor now and took the measure of each other, like boxers in a ring.
Pemberley was in trouble. The knife was buried up to its hilt in his shoulder. Tom could smell the tinniness of the blood cascading down his arm, could sense Crowe’s impending victory. He thought of the story the nurse at the Rawlock had told him about the night he was born. The combination of pregnancy and trauma to his mother’s body had killed her. Had her blood smelled like this?
“I always knew you were capable of dreadful things, Vincent,” said Pemberley, his voice airy despite the agony he must have been in. “But I never realized quite how dreadful. All those people. You’re a monster.”
“Do you call the Assassins monsters when they kill for the League?” replied Crowe, his eyes manic.
“As it happens, I’ve never been comfortable with the Assassins,” said Pemberley. “But they, at least, are killers with a code. They take their targets cleanly, they seek to avoid collateral damage. You? You set off a weapon in a square filled with children. You’re more than a monster. In fact, I don’t think there’s a word for what you are.”
Crowe scoffed. “In time no one will remember about the children. All that will matter is that the leadership was removed—”
“Oh, I assure you that the survivors will remember it,” said Pemberley levelly. “They will remember it vividly for the rest of their lives. You had left by the time the true horrors of the gas took effect. I can tell you, those images will be burned in their young minds forever.”
Tom believed him. How could he ever forget those swollen crimson faces, gasping for air as their lungs burned and foamed? And that, he realized, was why he had followed Crowe. Because those same horrors could have befallen his friends and classmates, could have struck his housemates and the children he passed every day in the street. It had been an act of pure evil. It was the same attitude Crowe had for the workhouse inmates in London. His friends were numbers, nothing more.
He couldn’t let Crowe escape. He wouldn’t. He made himself fold from this frightened, cowering boy into something new. A boy who thought clearly and acted decisively. Did what was necessary.
Slowly Tom repositioned himself behind Pemberley, breaking Crowe’s line of sight. Not that Crowe seemed to remember he was even there.
“The blood on your hands is so thick, Vincent, you’ll never be able to wash it out,” said Pemberley.
“Don’t Lady Macbeth me,” shrieked Crowe, incensed. “I’m part of something bigger than you can comprehend. We’re going to save the League. Without it, we’re doomed.”
“Oh, I see, you’re the hero in this tale?” Despite his ashen face and the alarming loss of blood, Pemberley roared with laughter.
Crowe charged forward like a bull and clattered into Pemberley. As the two men hit the floor, Tom rolled and dived for the pistol. Crowe kicked out at Tom, and his boot hammered into Tom’s ribs, driving the air from his lungs.
Lights flashed in Tom’s vision, and his thoughts blurred. He scrabbled for the pistol. Crowe’s strong fingers wrenched his wrist back and tore the weapon from his grasp.
The next thing Tom knew, Crowe was brandishing the pistol at him and Pemberley. The Master of Duplicity House slowly rose to his feet beside Tom, their backs to the open door of the airship.
“Now, where were we?” said Crowe before spitting a mouthful of blood on the floor. “Oh yes, I was throwing you out.”
Pemberley placed a hand gently on Tom’s back. “Hang on as long as you can,” he said. Then he gave Tom a wink and whispered, “Semper paratus.” And he stepped out the door.
Tom stared in open-mouthed horror. Pemberley had dropped out of sight like a stone.
Crowe seemed momentarily dumbfounded too, but he soon reasserted himself. “You next, rat,” he said, waving the pistol. “Or I can shoot you and roll you out. I don’t care which.”
A vast canopy of treetops spread out beneath them. They were flying much lower than before, the tips of the tallest trees just a hundred feet away. Without a pilot, the ship had been steadily losing altitude.
Wind battered Tom’s face, howling loudly with the thrum of the airship’s engines. But there was another timbre he could hear, rising in volume. And suddenly he saw its source.
Soaring up from beneath the ship was the small biplane Tom and the Corsair had stolen from the Sky Voyager. The plane rolled up and over the port bow of the airship, then back on itself. Tom caught a glimpse of the Corsair at the controls—and, astonishingly, Pemberley in the seat just behind him.
Crowe stared, agog. He fired some shots, but his aim was poor, and the plane continued its approach unchecked. Flustered, he charged back to the flight deck and threw himself into the pilot’s chair, wrenching at the controls. The floor pitched violently under Tom’s feet, and he was nearly thrown out the door, but he just managed to cling to the steel frame before he toppled out.
Tom dared another glance out of the doorway, his hands locked in a viselike grip on the doorframe. As the plane came alongside, he saw Pemberley was now at the controls and the Corsair was making his way out along the starboard wing toward him, using some kind of clawed instrument to cling to the wing.
The Corsair pulled a grappling hook and wire from his belt and whipped it at the airship. The sharp prongs buried themselves around the lip of the door, and the Corsair swung himself across the gap between the aircraft and in beside Tom.
What a show-off, thought Tom. “So you’re an air pirate now, are you?” he asked archly as relief flooded his body.
“All part of the job description,” panted the Corsair.
His arm moved like a striking snake, and three throwing knives lanced through the air toward the flight deck. The first struck Crowe in the biceps, making him drop the pistol. The blade had severed a tendon, forcing his arm to jerk out to the side. The second and third knives, their flight already predicting this movement, sank through the thick material of Crowe’s coat sleeve, pinning him to the dashboard. A deftly executed piece of marksmanship… but with a dreadful unintended consequence. As the blades buried themselves in the wood, one of them sliced right through a bundle of wires underneath—and the lights on the dashboard went out.
For a few moments no one noticed. Crowe swore loudly and tried to free himself. The Corsair scanned the flight deck in the hope of finding something with which he could restrain Crowe, and Tom scrabbled under the copilot’s chair to retrieve the gun.
Then Tom realized that everything around them had gone very quiet. “The engines have cut out!” he cried.
“You bloody fool,” shrieked Crowe, staring in horror at the dashboard.
The airship lurched, its nose tilting violently. All three of them were thrown forward—the Corsair clattering into Crowe, Tom hitting the dashboard hard a few moments later—and they all gasped in pain.
Tom lifted his head to see the windows of the flight deck now filled with green as they began to descend rapidly toward the forest below. No… not all green. There was gray stone and brown timber too. Directly in their path was a squat tower. Oh, that’s one of the watchtowers, he remembered Genevieve telling him on his first morning run. They’re dotted every few miles down the river and all over the mountains around here. The guards there keep a lookout for outsiders. It’s part of the town’s defenses.”
“You fool. You’ve killed us!” shouted Crowe as he and the Corsair took in the tower. “We’re going to hit it!” He thrashed again to try to release himself from where he was pinned, but to no avail.
They were dropping fast. The seconds felt like an eternity to Tom—an eternity where he was unable to move, unable to change the inevitable, unable to do anything but stare as the roof of the watchtower rushed up to meet them.
The hull of the airship impacted with such force that the tower’s roof was ripped clean off. Huge chunks of masonry and deadly splinters of steel and timber cascaded to the forest floor. The airship pivoted sideways… and then followed them down in a shrieking cacophony.
Chapter Twenty-Five ENEMIES AT THE GATE
Tom opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of the flight deck, covered in glass from the shattered windows. There was a gaping hole in the roof, and he could see a wall of the tower and sky above.
A few feet away, the Corsair seemed to be in the process of recovering his senses too. Blood was dripping from a wound in his brow, and there was a patch of blood on his shirt by his ribs. He looked dazed but didn’t appear too seriously hurt.
Unlike Crowe.
A long rod of metal was protruding from his chest.
A smear of blood stained his chin.
“Well, this is disappointing,” Crowe wheezed. His face was taut, skull-like. Blood spilled from his lips.
With a crunch of glass, Tom and the Corsair climbed gingerly to their feet. The Corsair made a brief examination of Crowe’s wound, but it was a pointless exercise. Crowe was about to die and there was nothing they could do about it.
Tom looked at the man who had caused such devastation, who had plotted and planned so elaborately and carefully, and who would now never see the fruits of his terrible labor.
“Why?” His voice cracked. “Why have you done this?”
Crowe swallowed a mouthful of blood.
“The enemy are at the gates,” he croaked. “Law enforcement agencies are growing more powerful and organized. They are after us.” His body jerked, his muscles seizing.
“All you’ve ever been interested in is your own glory,” spat the Corsair. “You and all the other so-called Chevaliers are the same.”
“This is about survival,” rasped Crowe. “If we don’t conquer the world, we are the ones who will be conquered.”
“You’re talking about claiming power beyond the control of the League,” said the Corsair. “It could never be sustained. And what of the cost? To both the League and beyond? We’re not tyrants!”
He was about to say more, but Tom reached up and touched his arm.
The Corsair followed Tom’s eyeline and realized that they had been joined by a fourth figure. The pilot who had been thrown free from the cupboard when the airship crashed had woken and managed to free himself of his bonds. He was now holding the lost pistol squarely at Tom and the Corsair.
“Can you move?” the pilot asked Crowe.
“I think I might be about to die,” replied Crowe flatly. He spat another mouthful of blood.
“Not until I’m paid,” said the pilot. He edged around the flight deck, trying to avoid stepping on broken glass and other debris with his shoeless feet. The whole time he kept the pistol trained on Tom and the Corsair, who remained motionless. Even if they’d wanted to spring up and disarm him, Tom knew that their bodies were too battered to move quickly enough. And so they watched, the Corsair’s breathing ragged, as the pilot slipped his free arm under Crowe and gingerly hauled him to his feet. The noises that Crowe made as he moved were horrific, and Tom was sure that the Politico was about to collapse and die at any moment. But somehow he managed to stagger out of the flight deck, the rod still buried deep in his chest, the dark hole at the end of the pilot’s pistol fixed on them at all times, unwavering.
